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I would be grateful for donations of any size, small or large, to help defray the cost (1) of maintaining this website, (2) and to finance my
past and present research which produced my book posted here, Volume One of "The Wound That Will Never Heal," and my forthcoming revision of Volume One (to be submitted for publication), and completion of Volume Two on Wagner's six other canonic operas and music-dramas. I sacrificed at least seven years of paid employment and incurred debts to complete this project, and am currently unemployed, so I thank you in advance for any financial help you can provide. Your friend, Paul Heise.

Key Colour Coding

Siegfried: Page 520

520

which Siegfried hopes to plunge once Nothung has been re-forged, according to Wagner. Neidhoehle is not far from the world: it is the world. And this world into which Siegfried told Mime he intends to go, wielding Nothung, is the world where Mime warns Siegfried cunning will trap him if he’s not armed with the fear which everyone else in the world lives by. And of course, Siegfried will eventually succumb to the cunning of the world of men when he, in T.1.2, arrives at the Hall of the Gibichungs, inhabited by Alberich’s son Hagen, and Hagen’s half siblings (children of Gibich and Hagen’s mother, Grimhilde) Gunther and Gutrune. Siegfried needs to liberate knowledge (Alberich’s Hoard), imagination (Alberich’s Tarnhelm), and the gift of thought itself (Alberich’s Ring) from the fear (Fafner) which religious faith engenders, and also to liberate it from Alberich’s threat to use it to destroy every noble, idealistic impulse in man, in order to free art from its servitude to religion, so that secular art (especially Wagner’s art) can restore lost innocence.

[S.1.3: E]

With this lesson in fear agreed upon, Siegfried now asks after his father’s sword which he had demanded Mime re-forge. Mime is forced to admit that he hasn’t the remotest idea how to re-forge the sword, which resists all his best efforts, so Siegfried tells Mime to get out of the way then: Siegfried will take in hand the re-forging of his father’s sword himself:

Siegfried:(#103 frag or vari: [a three-note rising staccato figure which accompanies Siegfried’s forging])Thither you shall lead me(:#103 vari?): when I’ve learned the meaning of fear, I’ll away then into the world!(#?: [a sharp figure also possibly heard during Siegfried’s forging song])Be quick then! Make me the sword, in the world I mean to wield it(:#?).

Siegfried:(#41 duple vari:)The idler is skilled in subtle wiles(:#41 duple vari);(#104:)he ought to admit to being a bungler: by cunning wiles he lies his way out(:#104). Here with the fragments! Away with the(#109)bungler!(#57 or #109?:striding over to the hearth) For me my father’s blade